United States district court Archives

Jan Brewer’s Racist Law Voted Down… Again

Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona who fought tooth and nail to make her racial profiling bill become law, took yet another blow on Monday when the United States of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit called the law “unconstitutional”:

PHOENIX — The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against the State of Arizona on Monday and let stand a lower court decision blocking the most contentious parts of the state’simmigration law from going into effect.

The decision calling the provisions unconstitutional was a victory for the Obama administration, which argued that the law interfered with the federal government’s authority over immigration. Two judges ruled against Arizona, and one dissented in part from them.

Last July, just days before the law was to take effect, Judge Susan Bolton of Federal District Court issued an injunction blocking parts of it. Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who supports the crackdown on immigrants, filed an appeal seeking to have the injunction lifted.

After the appeals court rejected the state’s request on Monday and issued a lengthy decision indicating that it believed the state had overstepped its authority, State Senator Russell K. Pearce, a Republican who is the principal sponsor of the law, remained defiant, saying the issue would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

Although she’s been wrong on just about every decision she’s made for her state, you’ve got to hand it to this Republican Governor. She is persistent, even if it means her persistence is in direct opposition to the Constitution. But then again, today’s Republican haven’t shown much respect for the Constitution anyways.

Judge Rules Health Care Is Constitutional, News Media Gone Fishing

So the theory is true — that proponents for health care reform will get little to no media press coverage as compared to those opposed to it. A few weeks ago when a Republican judge ruled the entire Health Care Reform was unconstitutional and should be thrown out, because of one aspect called the individual mandate, the media went crazy! They were all over the story like white on rice. But yesterday, when the third judge – U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler – ruled in favor of the Obama administration and agreed that the bill is constitutional, we heard crickets!

And I am not the only one saying this. Here’s what Jed Lewison said about the unfair coverage;

coverage of Judge Roger Vinson’s decision against reform saturated the media, even though his ruling had no immediate impact on health reform.

The Vinson ruling received A1 coverage in The New York Times and dominated cable news. The Kessler ruling was covered on A14 of the Times and as far as cable news goes, I was only able to find two references to it — both on Fox, and each for less than a minute. (I’m basing this on closed caption text searches, so it’s possible I missed a couple of references, but there was hardly any coverage at all.)

After the Vinson ruling, Steve Benen pointed out the huge disparity in coverage between the two rulings in favor of reform and the two rulings against reform. Even if you were to dismiss the significance of those numbers on the theory that the rulings against reform were bigger news because they happened after the rulings that upheld reform, yesterday’s ruling should be at least as significant as Vinson’s ruling because it means that three judges have now ruled in favor of reform compared with two who have ruled against it.

If you’re keeping score, it’s 3 Democratic judges for the constitutionality of the bill, and 2 Republican judges against.

But have no dispare. There’s sure to be another Republican judge to rule against Health Care Reform, and then we will once again hear all manner of analysis and theories and punditry, references and cross-references, and interpretation, and evaluations, and breakdowns, and…..